According to the literature on technological collaboration, trust between the partners involved plays a major role for the outcome. The current study analyzes trust and attitudes to collaboration in a technology transfer project between two high-technology firms—one located in a developed economy, the other in an emerging economy. Compared with previous research the study has a two major benefits: equal access to participants on both sides; and a longitudinal design which will make it possible to understand the dynamics of trust, attitudes and emergent actions.

This paper presents preliminary findings from the first stage of the transfer project and is based on a survey administered to 93 engineers from both firms. The survey collected data on trust propensity, trustworthiness (competence, integrity and benevolence), image of the other party and personal expectations and analyzed how these factors influence attitudes to collaboration. Preliminary findings confirm that trust propensity, perceived competence and benevolence, image of the other party and personal expectations all have an impact on attitudes to collaboration. Perceived integrity, however, did not show any correlation to attitudes to collaboration, which implies that managers on both sides will need time and effort to demonstrate their capabilities in this area to each other.

Studies of the post-acquisition practices of established economy firms argue that integration is one of the most important factors that drives acquisition performance. Recent research suggests that firms from emerging economies may use different approaches in their acquisitions. However, there is a lack of studies of the post-acquisition strategies of emerging economy firms. This study presents an in-depth case study of the strategy of an emerging economy firm from a large business group after its acquisition of a classical brand-name company in a developed economy. Moreover, this strategy and its performance outcomes is compared with the strategy of the acquired firm´s previous owner, an established MNE from a leading OECD country. The study reveals that the emerging economy firm, Tata Motors, pursued a consistent separation strategy in all the investigated areas – human resource management, new product development, production, and marketing. Moreover, this separation strategy turned out to be much more successful than the integration strategy pursued by the previous owner, Ford Motors.

The growth of Randamp;D in East Asia has triggered the notion of a new innovation geography, where Randamp;D is no longer a privilege of the traditional OECD countries. What does this mean for mid-sized emerging economies, without the scale advantages and bargaining power of India or China? This paper uses Turkey as a case to examine the continual unevenness of international Randamp;D investments. By analyzing opportunities and limitations for local initiatives in the telecommunications, pharmaceutical, and automotive industries the paper finds that active private capital, a sufficient scale of production, and focused public policies are needed to attract international Randamp;D.

According to sustainability transitions theories, innovation policies should create protective spaces (‘niches’) for promising new technologies. Moreover they should support a cumulative process of market formation and growth. Based on results from comparative case studies of two competing technological innovation systems for heavy transport (biogas and electrification), this paper argues that these recommendations are contradictory when technology alternatives with different degrees of maturity compete for the same niche. Should innovation policies open up the niche for the promising but immature alternative, or should they continue to support the technology that already has attained a niche position? If this contradiction remains unsolved, there is a risk for conflicts that block the progress of both alternatives. The paper suggests that there is a need for differentiated policies to resolve the contraction. In order to facilitate further development of both systems, the paper suggests that niche nurturing for immature systems needs to be combined with redeployment into new market segments for more mature systems.

Incremental improvement of a deeply embedded technology system has been a hallmark of the automotive industry for a very long time. Efforts to develop alternatives have repeatedly failed. This paper analyses how Toyota started to challenge this pattern in the late 1990s, by the architectural innovation embodied in Prius, the first mass-produced hybrid-electric car. This is followed by an account of how key competitors reacted by accelerating their incremental innovation efforts, in an era when concerns over fuel prices and greenhouse gas emissions increased demand for environmentally sound vehicles. The paper builds on records of patenting and performance of actually marketed models to analyse the unfolding technology competition. It also considers the most probable technologies on the market in a 10–12 year timeframe, and further explains how different technoogy strategies put competing firms in different positions in an era of ferment.

Manufacturing industry is facing increasingly stringent demands on environmental compliance and the auto industry is particularly exposed to pressure from public and authorities in this area. The purpose of this article is to provide an empirical analysis on how the application of new technologies in order to comply with environmental demands may change the product development process within the auto industry. Experiences from the development of Toyota Prius, the worlds first mass-produced car based on a hybrid power train, are presented and analysed. The analysis shows that technological uncertainty made it necessary to move beyond the prevailing lean product development approach. The article concludes by suggesting a strategy consisting of three fundamental elements in order to control technological uncertainty in innovative and time-focused product development projects up-front testing, intense horizontal communication, and clear and challenging objectives.

By adopting challenging targets on environmental performance, pro-active industrial firms may push themselves towards discontinuous product innovation. Such innovation can be understood as being either architectural, i.e. arranging components in new ways, or modular, i.e. introducing new technologies in specific components or subsystems. We argue that these two dimensions of discontinuous change call for some specific managerial responses. Architectural innovation challenges the whole engineering organisation, making it necessary to focus development efforts on technological interfaces, whereas modular innovation has a more isolated effect, making specialisation and co-ordination over organisational boundaries particularly important. Altogether, our analysis highlights the importance of adapting the project organisation to the development task and addressing part-whole relationships when managing innovation in established products and systems, something that becomes increasingly important in the strive towards sustainable development.

The purpose of this paper is to delve into the dilemma of managing development projects which are not only highly complex but also include multiple dimensions of uncertainty, i.e. market volatility, technological novelty and changing customer specifications. Particular attention is directed towards managerial challenges and approaches to handle this dilemma. Previous research on the subject indicates that complexity and uncertainty require different approaches, but these studies tend to provide suggestions either on managing complexity in stable industries or on managing uncertainty in less complex projects. This paper rests on an in-depth study of two complex development projects in a company context at the extreme end of R&D intensity and uncertainty.

The paper identifies four managerial challenges: coping with volatile market demands; staying at the technological forefront where technology and product development take place at the same time; responding to rapidly changing customer specifications; and dealing with the implications of very low production volumes of non-standard units. The analysis shows that these challenges can be managed by utilizing a matrix of formal systems, quasi-formalized visualization and informal interaction, which promotes responsiveness and flexibility in a controlled fashion.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study the role of field service in product development in manufacturing firms.

Design/methodology/approach – The study employed a case study research design. Multiple data collection techniques such as interviews and internal reports were utilized to study two contrasting cases.

Findings - The paper makes three primary contributions. First, it links service literature to product development in manufacturing firms. Second, it investigates how firms use different mechanisms for building capabilities required to manage contradictory requirements between R&D, manufacturing and field service. Third, it demonstrates how two successful firms, in spite of very different prerequisites, actually exhibit strikingly similar challenges and mechanisms.

Research limitations/implications – Limitations are primarily associated with methodology, a case study approach based on two cases.

Practical implications – Managers can learn from firms in other contexts and implement similar mechanisms, but they need to make adaptations on the operational level.

Originality/value – The paper investigates a topic that is rarely studied.

This paper begins by consolidating industrial challenges and research issues concerning Product/Service Systems obtained through various activities by the authors. Based on this, it points out the importance of the holistic view in further research in this area so that PSS providers do not fall into local optimization. The intent of this contribution to our research community includes shedding light on interesting issues that thus far have been relatively invisible and with narrower scope.

This paper shows how a provider of complex hardware with long operation times makes use of a structured methods approach to develop maintenance, repair and overhaul services and improve its service solutions. Service engineering is a methodical approach for the design of service offerings, and can be described by using the dimensions outcome, structure, process and management. So far, little is known about how firms implement such approaches. On the basis of a longitudinal case study within a large, product-based, high-technology business corporation, the paper shows that the use of a simplified service engineering model may be effective in supporting both the development and the maintenance of a comprehensive service business. More specifically, the case suggests the following factors to be important for success: A systematically applied engineering method, the presence of dedicated service champions, an ability to articulate and formalize new service roles, and deep technical knowledge of the involved hardware. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V

Sustainable mobility requires innovation in public transportation. This paper provides an in-depth perspective on how a heavy vehicle maker with an entrenched tradition of incremental innovations is grappling to develop a radically new city bus with a series hybrid power-train. The study illustrates the managerial challenges involved in this innovation: the need for the company to exploit its core capabilities in areas such as diesel technology and modular design, and at the same time to overcome core rigidities embedded in its tradition of developing new vehicles in carefully planned small steps. The paper shows how the firm is responding to these challenges by using unconventional methods, such as the concurrent development of a new power-train and new bus designs, public demonstrations of early prototypes, advanced customer field testing, the creation of new competence structures, and the use of international events to set hard deadlines and maintain momentum.

The aim of this chapter is to outline the key issues for heavy vehicle manufacturers in their collaboration with suppliers of electric motors. The information was collected via an in-depth study of the hybrid product development conducted by two heavy-vehicle manufacturers with their respective electric motor suppliers: Scania–Voith and Volvo Trucks– Kollmorgen. The two vehicle manufacturers used different types of electric motor for their hybrid powertrains. They also chose different types of architecture for their hybrid vehicles. By analysing the similarities and differences in these two collaborations, the chapter will demonstrate some of the key challenges involved.

The next section presents the hybrid development processes at Volvo and Scania, and the following two sections deal with the technological dynamics of electric drive systems and the development of the electric motors used in Volvo Trucks’ and Scania’s heavy hybrid electric vehicles. A comparative analysis of hybrid development and supplier collaboration conducted by Volvo Trucks and Scania follows. The final section provides conclusions on how new product development (NPD) collaborations are organized and a discussion on lessons learnt from the study.

The automotive industry has a strong presence in the global economy and employs a significant proportion of the working population. It has contributed to the growth of modern society by satisfying everyday mobility. However, it has been accused of badly affecting the environment and public health, and thus finding new methods of propulsion for automotives is currently a subject of intense debate. In this volume, the concept of sustainable development has been correlated with the main theoretical framework of production analysis and managerial economics, that is: manufacturing and architecture theories; the theory of comparative advantage of design-location; design driven and design-thinking theories; concepts-knowledge models; rule-based and innovative design regimes; path dependency theory; literature on breakthrough and disruptive innovations; studies on technology competition; reasoned action and planned behaviour theories; institutional theoretical approaches; firm growth theories; the smart grid paradigm; business model innovation; and definition of scenarios through analytic hierarchy process models and consumer framing.The Greening of the Automobile Industry is one of the products of the research programme 'Sustainable Development and Automotive Industry', run between 2007-2010 by GERPISA (the Permanent Group for the Study of and Research into the Automobile Industry and its Employees). GERPISA is a French-based international network of researchers in economics, management, history, and sociology, all studying the automotive industry. GERPISA was formed in 1992 and is made up of 400 members from 27 different countries. Since 2010 GERPISA has become a Groupement d'Interet Scientifique based at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan.

126.

Söderlund, Jonas

et al.

Linköping University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Linköping University, Department of Management and Economics, Business Administration.

Berggren, Christian

Linköping University, The Institute of Technology. Linköping University, Department of Management and Economics.

Knowledge integration - the purposeful combination of specialised and complementary knowledge to achieve specific tasks - is increasingly important for organisations. This book offers a consistent set of ideas, methods and tools useful to interpret, analyse and act upon the processes of knowledge integration across organisational and other boundaries.

128.

Windahl, Charlotta

et al.

Linköping University, Department of Management and Economics. Linköping University, The Institute of Technology.

Andersson, Pierre

Linköping University, Department of Management and Economics. Linköping University, The Institute of Technology.

For an increasing number of firms in the capital goods industry, combinations of products and services, so called integrated solutions, are becoming part of their future growth strategies. By analysing three case studies, the article highlights the variety of such solutions and some important implications for the involved companies. The analysis suggests that companies need an extended set of competences to succeed in providing integrated solutions, amounting to a balance of technical and integration competence with market/business, consulting and partnering competences. This implies a move from product-focus to customer-centric orientation and focus on optimisation of user processes. From a research perspective the paper underlines the importance of integrating studies of product and service innovation, two fields that so far have been studied separately.